France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
It has been said that the plotters have the numbers, but they're withholding letters because they don't want to go off now and Sunak just win the VONC. After May the opportunity will have ripened a bit. They should spend the time finding a candidate, putting a programme together for the remaining months in Government, and planning how to deal with Sunak, whether to offer him a Government post or an ambassadorship somewhere nice.
I am not sure what planet you live on politically, but the idea the conservative party can spend time choosing another pre GE leader is not only extraordinary but an insult to the electorate beyond compare
Sunak leads into the next GE for better for worse and whenever, then the conservative party can take as long as they want over their own internal battles while the country moves on under an overwhelming majority Starmer government
Truss did more harm to the conservative brand in just 6 short weeks than even Boris did with his partying and handed Labour the biggest gift of all in political terms
That's assuming anyone sensible would want the job.
"Sinking ship seeks new captain" is hardly the most attractive of opportunities. All that's in it for taking over from Sunak pre-GE is a chance to get your name onto the list of PMs. your mugshot on the Downing Street staircase, and a batch of your friends/cronies/donors/illegitimate children onto the honours list.
Rethinking, given its the Tories, maybe there might actually be a bunfight for it?
I still see Mordaunt as the most likely candidate to win, and have any impact.
Even a competitive leadership election could be completed in a fortnight if the party board decided such....
If Penny, who is a phenomenal campaigner with an impressive track record in Government, wins a decent majority, where do the wannabe Faragist failures like Badenoch, Braverman and Jenrick stand? They will have missed the boat, or do you anticipate they could depose in a year, or to keep her job the once woke Penny becomes radical to keep them on side?
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
Nonsense. Johnson actually did rather little for Ukraine. He used his full skillset to make it look much more. Germany has delivered much more, but quietly.
Germany has delivered more because it has more to give, but I think Johnson would have spent the money necessary to start up the production lines to produce new kit to send.
Johnson made sure that Ukraine had the equipment it needed to defend Kyiv in the first month of the war - at a time when Germany was promising to send non-lethal equipment only.
That help was delivered before the invasion. It was actually Ben Wallace's project pushed through in the face of Boris Johnson's scepticism.
Johnson very quickly identified the bandwagon and he jumped on quick. Rhetoric does matter and Johnson is good at it. But it had no effect at all on the Russian advance. For that you need hard weapons and cash. The main suppliers of those have been elsewhere.
Im.not sure now what the west is trying to achieve in ukraine. They seem to be supplying ukraine with just enough to allow them to lose slowly. Surely its best upping the ante and going all in or calli g for peace.
I am in favour of supplying them with nuclear weapons. Big, fuck off ones. That’s the kind of message that sticks in the mind.
Sure if you want to be incinerated in a mushroom cloud.
Why wouldn't you want Ukraine to have nuclear weapons?
Ukraine is losing and desperate so launches a nuclear attack on Moscow. Moscow responds by nuking Kyiv and other western cities perhaps. Everyone loses.
So you would support giving them tactical nukes?
I dont like nuclear escalation period so no.
If you are not in favour of 'nuclear escalation', then you should be calling for Ukraine to win ASAP.
Many appeasers say things like: "Russia may use their nukes against us!!!!!" as a reason not to support Ukraine, or minimise our support.
That is stupid one-dimensional thinking. Because *every* state, and perhaps even some non-state actors, will be watching what is happening and thinking: "Aha! Just the possession of nuclear weapons will protect me if I do EVIL!", and hence try to become nuclear-capable. In the same way the appeasers protect Russia.
And hence the appeaser's argument becomes one for increased proliferation, and an increased chance of becoming cinders.
Which is so obvious that I wonder why they call for it. Either because they're too stoopid to realise that is where it will lead, or because they actually want Russia to 'win'...
Which are you?
But sadly i dont think a ukrainian win is possible now so your point is moot.They dont have either the men or equipment.
You are like the sneak at school snitching to the teacher who everyone hates. Elon Musk agrees with me and i imagine he has considerable more knowledge than yourself.
Not even Jeremy Corbyn disliked the UK as much as the Tories do.
Hi from London, “crime capital of the world”. In Birmingham? Beware “rotting rubbish” and “boarded-up buildings”. Manchester is “the worst city in Europe for eco-friendly transport”. The ruling party’s new social media campaign is doing wonders for tourism
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
Nonsense. Johnson actually did rather little for Ukraine. He used his full skillset to make it look much more. Germany has delivered much more, but quietly.
Germany has delivered more because it has more to give, but I think Johnson would have spent the money necessary to start up the production lines to produce new kit to send.
Johnson made sure that Ukraine had the equipment it needed to defend Kyiv in the first month of the war - at a time when Germany was promising to send non-lethal equipment only.
That help was delivered before the invasion. It was actually Ben Wallace's project pushed through in the face of Boris Johnson's scepticism.
Johnson very quickly identified the bandwagon and he jumped on quick. Rhetoric does matter and Johnson is good at it. But it had no effect at all on the Russian advance. For that you need hard weapons and cash. The main suppliers of those have been elsewhere.
Im.not sure now what the west is trying to achieve in ukraine. They seem to be supplying ukraine with just enough to allow them to lose slowly. Surely its best upping the ante and going all in or calli g for peace.
I am in favour of supplying them with nuclear weapons. Big, fuck off ones. That’s the kind of message that sticks in the mind.
Sure if you want to be incinerated in a mushroom cloud.
Why wouldn't you want Ukraine to have nuclear weapons?
Ukraine is losing and desperate so launches a nuclear attack on Moscow. Moscow responds by nuking Kyiv and other western cities perhaps. Everyone loses.
So you would support giving them tactical nukes?
I dont like nuclear escalation period so no.
If you are not in favour of 'nuclear escalation', then you should be calling for Ukraine to win ASAP.
Many appeasers say things like: "Russia may use their nukes against us!!!!!" as a reason not to support Ukraine, or minimise our support.
That is stupid one-dimensional thinking. Because *every* state, and perhaps even some non-state actors, will be watching what is happening and thinking: "Aha! Just the possession of nuclear weapons will protect me if I do EVIL!", and hence try to become nuclear-capable. In the same way the appeasers protect Russia.
And hence the appeaser's argument becomes one for increased proliferation, and an increased chance of becoming cinders.
Which is so obvious that I wonder why they call for it. Either because they're too stoopid to realise that is where it will lead, or because they actually want Russia to 'win'...
Which are you?
But sadly i dont think a ukrainian win is possible now so your point is moot.They dont have either the men or equipment.
You are like the sneak at school snitching to the teacher who everyone hates. Elon Musk agrees with me and i imagine he has considerable more knowledge than yourself.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Although there were some practical objections he never really considered. For example,what to do about the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery in building it.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
Nonsense. Johnson actually did rather little for Ukraine. He used his full skillset to make it look much more. Germany has delivered much more, but quietly.
Germany has delivered more because it has more to give, but I think Johnson would have spent the money necessary to start up the production lines to produce new kit to send.
Johnson made sure that Ukraine had the equipment it needed to defend Kyiv in the first month of the war - at a time when Germany was promising to send non-lethal equipment only.
That help was delivered before the invasion. It was actually Ben Wallace's project pushed through in the face of Boris Johnson's scepticism.
Johnson very quickly identified the bandwagon and he jumped on quick. Rhetoric does matter and Johnson is good at it. But it had no effect at all on the Russian advance. For that you need hard weapons and cash. The main suppliers of those have been elsewhere.
Im.not sure now what the west is trying to achieve in ukraine. They seem to be supplying ukraine with just enough to allow them to lose slowly. Surely its best upping the ante and going all in or calli g for peace.
The latter is not an option. Putin does not want 'peace'.
Im pretty sure if you offered Putin eastern ukraine and perhaps odessa and kharkiv he would be ok with peace. Kyiv and western ukraine would then be left alone.
Why would we want to give Putin anything when for trivial cost to the Western World thousands of Russians are being killed and hundreds of units of Russian military equipment are being destroyed each and every week ?
The defeat of Russia's energy war against the West means that the West now has all the options.
Mmm theres just the small matter of all the dead ukrainians. Or dont they matter to you.
The Ukrainians are happy defending their own land from occupation and genocide.
The killing of Russian soldiers and destruction of the Russian army is a good thing wherever it would happen.
The more Russia is damaged the better for the Western World.
Does it upset you that Russia's energy war against the West has failed ?
Ordinary ukrainians dont have much choice. Zelensky has near dictatorial powers and there is a massive war propoganda machine in ukraine. Why are so many ukrainian men hiding fron conscription if they are happy to fight.
You are a Russian troll.
For one thing, I think you're wrong in all you said that post. For another. if you want to mention 'dictatorial powers', just look at Putin...
Fuck off back under your bridge.
Zelensky does have immense power under martial law and has suspended presidential elections.
Ukraine do have a recruitment problem, not least because of the political deadlock resulting from nobody wanting to own the horribly unpopular mobilisation legislation. See the two recent WSJ articles.
There is an immense Ukrainian propoganda effort targeted at the west. You have been doggedly and uncritically regurgitating their lines on here for two years.
So, yes comrade, the bones of old mate Trent's post were correct.
Just like the UK government in WWII suspended its own election until the war's end, and gave itself immense emergency powers. There's nothing sinister about it.
Generally, when countries are invaded, they are going to implement measures that would seen extreme.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
Nonsense. Johnson actually did rather little for Ukraine. He used his full skillset to make it look much more. Germany has delivered much more, but quietly.
Germany has delivered more because it has more to give, but I think Johnson would have spent the money necessary to start up the production lines to produce new kit to send.
Johnson made sure that Ukraine had the equipment it needed to defend Kyiv in the first month of the war - at a time when Germany was promising to send non-lethal equipment only.
That help was delivered before the invasion. It was actually Ben Wallace's project pushed through in the face of Boris Johnson's scepticism.
Johnson very quickly identified the bandwagon and he jumped on quick. Rhetoric does matter and Johnson is good at it. But it had no effect at all on the Russian advance. For that you need hard weapons and cash. The main suppliers of those have been elsewhere.
Im.not sure now what the west is trying to achieve in ukraine. They seem to be supplying ukraine with just enough to allow them to lose slowly. Surely its best upping the ante and going all in or calli g for peace.
The latter is not an option. Putin does not want 'peace'.
Im pretty sure if you offered Putin eastern ukraine and perhaps odessa and kharkiv he would be ok with peace. Kyiv and western ukraine would then be left alone.
Why would we want to give Putin anything when for trivial cost to the Western World thousands of Russians are being killed and hundreds of units of Russian military equipment are being destroyed each and every week ?
The defeat of Russia's energy war against the West means that the West now has all the options.
Mmm theres just the small matter of all the dead ukrainians. Or dont they matter to you.
The Ukrainians are happy defending their own land from occupation and genocide.
The killing of Russian soldiers and destruction of the Russian army is a good thing wherever it would happen.
The more Russia is damaged the better for the Western World.
Does it upset you that Russia's energy war against the West has failed ?
Ordinary ukrainians dont have much choice. Zelensky has near dictatorial powers and there is a massive war propoganda machine in ukraine. Why are so many ukrainian men hiding fron conscription if they are happy to fight.
You are a Russian troll.
For one thing, I think you're wrong in all you said that post. For another. if you want to mention 'dictatorial powers', just look at Putin...
Fuck off back under your bridge.
Zelensky does have immense power under martial law and has suspended presidential elections.
Ukraine do have a recruitment problem, not least because of the political deadlock resulting from nobody wanting to own the horribly unpopular mobilisation legislation. See the two recent WSJ articles.
There is an immense Ukrainian propoganda effort targeted at the west. You have been doggedly and uncritically regurgitating their lines on here for two years.
So, yes comrade, the bones of old mate Trent's post were correct.
It is total war for Ukraine (and Russia...), and there are always manpower issues in such affairs. Russia is also suffering: if not, why the penal battalions?
Also, the ' ukrainian men hiding fron conscription' is a) not a new thing, and b) that it is happening at a large scale seems to an invention of the Russian media that you slurp the anal dribblings from, and c) effects Russia to. Look at the amount of young Russians who have fled their country.
If I am 'regurgitating their lines', then you are 'regurgitating' the lines of a fascist and imperialist state. Lines which are no less true, and IMV far less true.
Because you aren't against imperalism and fascism, are you?
Almost every issue Ukraine is suffering from, so is Russia. It's weird how blind some people are to this.
It has been said that the plotters have the numbers, but they're withholding letters because they don't want to go off now and Sunak just win the VONC. After May the opportunity will have ripened a bit. They should spend the time finding a candidate, putting a programme together for the remaining months in Government, and planning how to deal with Sunak, whether to offer him a Government post or an ambassadorship somewhere nice.
The polling says that Penny Mordaunt is the only candidate to find.
She is a very impressive political operator and she looks like Catherine Deneuve. A shiny new bottle, which may fly off the shelves, but the same dreary transformed to vinegar wine is within.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
Nonsense. Johnson actually did rather little for Ukraine. He used his full skillset to make it look much more. Germany has delivered much more, but quietly.
Germany has delivered more because it has more to give, but I think Johnson would have spent the money necessary to start up the production lines to produce new kit to send.
Johnson made sure that Ukraine had the equipment it needed to defend Kyiv in the first month of the war - at a time when Germany was promising to send non-lethal equipment only.
That help was delivered before the invasion. It was actually Ben Wallace's project pushed through in the face of Boris Johnson's scepticism.
Johnson very quickly identified the bandwagon and he jumped on quick. Rhetoric does matter and Johnson is good at it. But it had no effect at all on the Russian advance. For that you need hard weapons and cash. The main suppliers of those have been elsewhere.
Im.not sure now what the west is trying to achieve in ukraine. They seem to be supplying ukraine with just enough to allow them to lose slowly. Surely its best upping the ante and going all in or calli g for peace.
I am in favour of supplying them with nuclear weapons. Big, fuck off ones. That’s the kind of message that sticks in the mind.
Sure if you want to be incinerated in a mushroom cloud.
Why wouldn't you want Ukraine to have nuclear weapons?
Ukraine is losing and desperate so launches a nuclear attack on Moscow. Moscow responds by nuking Kyiv and other western cities perhaps. Everyone loses.
So you would support giving them tactical nukes?
I dont like nuclear escalation period so no.
If you are not in favour of 'nuclear escalation', then you should be calling for Ukraine to win ASAP.
Many appeasers say things like: "Russia may use their nukes against us!!!!!" as a reason not to support Ukraine, or minimise our support.
That is stupid one-dimensional thinking. Because *every* state, and perhaps even some non-state actors, will be watching what is happening and thinking: "Aha! Just the possession of nuclear weapons will protect me if I do EVIL!", and hence try to become nuclear-capable. In the same way the appeasers protect Russia.
And hence the appeaser's argument becomes one for increased proliferation, and an increased chance of becoming cinders.
Which is so obvious that I wonder why they call for it. Either because they're too stoopid to realise that is where it will lead, or because they actually want Russia to 'win'...
Which are you?
But sadly i dont think a ukrainian win is possible now so your point is moot.They dont have either the men or equipment.
You are like the sneak at school snitching to the teacher who everyone hates. Elon Musk agrees with me and i imagine he has considerable more knowledge than yourself.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Although there were some practical objections he never really considered. For example,what to do about the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery in building it.
1) it wouldn’t have to be built within miles of the Montgomery. 2) the “it’ll blow like an atomic bomb” stuff is rubbish. Deliberate detonations of far larger quantities of explosives produce tsunamis of…. Inches
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
Substitute stealing for adopting and the current iteration of the Tories are ok at the first part of that proposition, but absolutely STINKING at the second.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
Substitute stealing for adopting and the current iteration of the Tories are ok at the first part of that proposition, but absolutely STINKING at the second.
I suppose it depends on “current iteration” but I was responding to the mention of Boris Bikes
I have been working through the videos two or three a week for some time now, following a similar recommendation by one of us - you or JJ, I forget, sorry - and they have been most interesting, not least in discussing events that don't (comparatively) get into the newspapers.
Sorry to immediately refer to the previous thread but it is something I feel strongly about. There was a discussion on assisted dying and the discussion got away from the original point. I have no issues with people of sound mind deciding to end their life. However that is a whole different kettle of fish to what @Trent was advocating which was others deciding to end other people's lives on the basis of cost which is disgusting.
What do you expect from Russian's, they would knobble their Gran's for a rouble
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Although there were some practical objections he never really considered. For example,what to do about the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery in building it.
Also how anyone was to get there. Imagine having to go through Estuaryland. Might not have been a bad idea if they could throw in a direct connection from Edinburgh (etc) to the rest of Europe [edit] via HS2 while at it.
But I hate to think what Mr Sunak would have done to the transport links if we were in the middle of building London Johnson Airport.
I have been working through the videos two or three a week for some time now, following a similar recommendation by one of us - you or JJ, I forget, sorry - and they have been most interesting, not least in discussing events that don't (comparatively) get into the newspapers.
I'm unsure if I'm the one who recommended it, but I've been watching Mentour for a few years now, on and off. He is excellent.
Another good aviation channel is Blancolirio; although he also covers some non-aviation stuff, and loads of general aviation incidents. https://www.youtube.com/@blancolirio
The story of how Blancolirio became an airline pilot was quite fascinating, if I recall it correctly.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Although there were some practical objections he never really considered. For example,what to do about the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery in building it.
Also how anyone was to get there. Imagine having to go through Estuaryland. Might not have been a bad idea if they could throw in a direct connection from Edinburgh (etc) to the rest of Europe [edit] via HS2 while at it.
But I hate to think what Mr Sunak would have done to the transport links if we were in the middle of building London Johnson Airport.
Well, originally of course that was the idea. Alter the route of HS1 slightly so it went past it, then link HS1 to HS2 via Camden Town.
But, that kept being salami-sliced away to the point of lunacy.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Although there were some practical objections he never really considered. For example,what to do about the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery in building it.
Also how anyone was to get there. Imagine having to go through Estuaryland. Might not have been a bad idea if they could throw in a direct connection from Edinburgh (etc) to the rest of Europe [edit] via HS2 while at it.
But I hate to think what Mr Sunak would have done to the transport links if we were in the middle of building London Johnson Airport.
Heathrow isn't exactly convenient for some of us, either.
The truth is that any large newly sited airport requires massive infrastructure improvements that may dwarf the actual cost of the airport itself. But that is not a reason not to do it.
I agree with your last line. Then again, I'm rather bullish on improving infrastructure...
Sorry to immediately refer to the previous thread but it is something I feel strongly about. There was a discussion on assisted dying and the discussion got away from the original point. I have no issues with people of sound mind deciding to end their life. However that is a whole different kettle of fish to what @Trent was advocating which was others deciding to end other people's lives on the basis of cost which is disgusting.
What do you expect from Russian's, they would knobble their Gran's for a rouble
I have re-read Matthew Parris's piece on assisted dying and the cost of keeping the very elderly alive. I am wondering if he is serious or is he writing something on the lines of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"?
I have been working through the videos two or three a week for some time now, following a similar recommendation by one of us - you or JJ, I forget, sorry - and they have been most interesting, not least in discussing events that don't (comparatively) get into the newspapers.
I'm unsure if I'm the one who recommended it, but I've been watching Mentour for a few years now, on and off. He is excellent.
Another good aviation channel is Blancolirio; although he also covers some non-aviation stuff, and loads of general aviation incidents. https://www.youtube.com/@blancolirio
The story of how Blancolirio became an airline pilot was quite fascinating, if I recall it correctly.
Who cares? Just take the credit, like London mayors for their predecessors' ideas!
Seriously, thanks for that - now bookmarked to try out.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Although there were some practical objections he never really considered. For example,what to do about the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery in building it.
Also how anyone was to get there. Imagine having to go through Estuaryland. Might not have been a bad idea if they could throw in a direct connection from Edinburgh (etc) to the rest of Europe [edit] via HS2 while at it.
But I hate to think what Mr Sunak would have done to the transport links if we were in the middle of building London Johnson Airport.
Well, originally of course that was the idea. Alter the route of HS1 slightly so it went past it, then link HS1 to HS2 via Camden Town.
But, that kept being salami-sliced away to the point of lunacy.
Linking HS1 and HS2 via Camden Town was always slightly odd. An intelligent integrated scheme would have had the link via the Elizabeth line, linking at Old Oak and Stratford. But that would have involved devising an integrated network a couple of decades ago...
Sorry to immediately refer to the previous thread but it is something I feel strongly about. There was a discussion on assisted dying and the discussion got away from the original point. I have no issues with people of sound mind deciding to end their life. However that is a whole different kettle of fish to what @Trent was advocating which was others deciding to end other people's lives on the basis of cost which is disgusting.
What do you expect from Russian's, they would knobble their Gran's for a rouble
I have re-read Matthew Parris's piece on assisted dying and the cost of keeping the very elderly alive. I am wondering if he is serious or is he writing something on the lines of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"?
I'm afraid that it's become increasingly difficult to tell reality from satire these days.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Although there were some practical objections he never really considered. For example,what to do about the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery in building it.
Also how anyone was to get there. Imagine having to go through Estuaryland. Might not have been a bad idea if they could throw in a direct connection from Edinburgh (etc) to the rest of Europe [edit] via HS2 while at it.
But I hate to think what Mr Sunak would have done to the transport links if we were in the middle of building London Johnson Airport.
Heathrow isn't exactly convenient for some of us, either.
The truth is that any large newly sited airport requires massive infrastructure improvements that may dwarf the actual cost of the airport itself. But that is not a reason not to do it.
I agree with your last line. Then again, I'm rather bullish on improving infrastructure...
It is also worth noting that even building the airport itself can be quite complex.
On Ukraine, the Americans only have themselves to blame. They wouldn't let Ukraine us weapons to hit Russians stockpiles of men, equipment and arms dumps in Russia. So the very resourceful Ukrainian arms industry has developed drones that can do the job with homegrown weapons.
The Ukrainians are quite within their rights to tell the Americans they will do what they can to make the war as costly as possible for Russia, by trashing Russian domestic infrastructure. If the Americans want that to stop, then they need to supply all the weapons and minute-by-minute intel to allow the Ukrainians to destroy so much Russian kit that the invasion of Ukraine is unsustainable.
Ideally in tandem, some uber-rich benefactor will buy several Republican Congressmen, get them to retire early with well paid sinecures, allowing the Democrats to get a huge aid package through Congress.
More radically, Ukraine and Poland should form a combined mega Eastern European state that would properly terrify Russia. In the EU, in NATO, it would stop Putin in his tracks.
If only somebody had written an article about Poland's strategic interests in the area based on it's extensive history...
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
Nonsense. Johnson actually did rather little for Ukraine. He used his full skillset to make it look much more. Germany has delivered much more, but quietly.
Germany has delivered more because it has more to give, but I think Johnson would have spent the money necessary to start up the production lines to produce new kit to send.
Johnson made sure that Ukraine had the equipment it needed to defend Kyiv in the first month of the war - at a time when Germany was promising to send non-lethal equipment only.
That help was delivered before the invasion. It was actually Ben Wallace's project pushed through in the face of Boris Johnson's scepticism.
Johnson very quickly identified the bandwagon and he jumped on quick. Rhetoric does matter and Johnson is good at it. But it had no effect at all on the Russian advance. For that you need hard weapons and cash. The main suppliers of those have been elsewhere.
Im.not sure now what the west is trying to achieve in ukraine. They seem to be supplying ukraine with just enough to allow them to lose slowly. Surely its best upping the ante and going all in or calli g for peace.
The latter is not an option. Putin does not want 'peace'.
Im pretty sure if you offered Putin eastern ukraine and perhaps odessa and kharkiv he would be ok with peace. Kyiv and western ukraine would then be left alone.
Why would we want to give Putin anything when for trivial cost to the Western World thousands of Russians are being killed and hundreds of units of Russian military equipment are being destroyed each and every week ?
The defeat of Russia's energy war against the West means that the West now has all the options.
Mmm theres just the small matter of all the dead ukrainians. Or dont they matter to you.
The Ukrainians are happy defending their own land from occupation and genocide.
The killing of Russian soldiers and destruction of the Russian army is a good thing wherever it would happen.
The more Russia is damaged the better for the Western World.
Does it upset you that Russia's energy war against the West has failed ?
Ordinary ukrainians dont have much choice. Zelensky has near dictatorial powers and there is a massive war propoganda machine in ukraine. Why are so many ukrainian men hiding fron conscription if they are happy to fight.
You are a Russian troll.
For one thing, I think you're wrong in all you said that post. For another. if you want to mention 'dictatorial powers', just look at Putin...
Fuck off back under your bridge.
Zelensky does have immense power under martial law and has suspended presidential elections.
Ukraine do have a recruitment problem, not least because of the political deadlock resulting from nobody wanting to own the horribly unpopular mobilisation legislation. See the two recent WSJ articles.
There is an immense Ukrainian propoganda effort targeted at the west. You have been doggedly and uncritically regurgitating their lines on here for two years.
So, yes comrade, the bones of old mate Trent's post were correct.
Trent is a Russian shill of the first order , a gommerel fanny.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Although there were some practical objections he never really considered. For example,what to do about the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery in building it.
Also how anyone was to get there. Imagine having to go through Estuaryland. Might not have been a bad idea if they could throw in a direct connection from Edinburgh (etc) to the rest of Europe [edit] via HS2 while at it.
But I hate to think what Mr Sunak would have done to the transport links if we were in the middle of building London Johnson Airport.
Heathrow isn't exactly convenient for some of us, either.
The truth is that any large newly sited airport requires massive infrastructure improvements that may dwarf the actual cost of the airport itself. But that is not a reason not to do it.
I agree with your last line. Then again, I'm rather bullish on improving infrastructure...
It is also worth noting that even building the airport itself can be quite complex.
Berlin can explain this to you.
Or, alternatively, Hong Kong International Airport. which proves they can be done well despite much more difficult requirements.
(I once went to a talk at the Institute of Civil Engineers about the then-ongoing construction of the Tsing Ma Bridge to HK ariport. It was right after the Heathrow tunnel collapse, and from memory the mood was rather sombre. I also heard some stuff about what really happened with the tunnel collapse that does not seem to square with the official report.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
Nonsense. Johnson actually did rather little for Ukraine. He used his full skillset to make it look much more. Germany has delivered much more, but quietly.
Germany has delivered more because it has more to give, but I think Johnson would have spent the money necessary to start up the production lines to produce new kit to send.
Johnson made sure that Ukraine had the equipment it needed to defend Kyiv in the first month of the war - at a time when Germany was promising to send non-lethal equipment only.
That help was delivered before the invasion. It was actually Ben Wallace's project pushed through in the face of Boris Johnson's scepticism.
Johnson very quickly identified the bandwagon and he jumped on quick. Rhetoric does matter and Johnson is good at it. But it had no effect at all on the Russian advance. For that you need hard weapons and cash. The main suppliers of those have been elsewhere.
Im.not sure now what the west is trying to achieve in ukraine. They seem to be supplying ukraine with just enough to allow them to lose slowly. Surely its best upping the ante and going all in or calli g for peace.
I am in favour of supplying them with nuclear weapons. Big, fuck off ones. That’s the kind of message that sticks in the mind.
Sure if you want to be incinerated in a mushroom cloud.
Why wouldn't you want Ukraine to have nuclear weapons?
Ukraine is losing and desperate so launches a nuclear attack on Moscow. Moscow responds by nuking Kyiv and other western cities perhaps. Everyone loses.
So you would support giving them tactical nukes?
I dont like nuclear escalation period so no.
If you are not in favour of 'nuclear escalation', then you should be calling for Ukraine to win ASAP.
Many appeasers say things like: "Russia may use their nukes against us!!!!!" as a reason not to support Ukraine, or minimise our support.
That is stupid one-dimensional thinking. Because *every* state, and perhaps even some non-state actors, will be watching what is happening and thinking: "Aha! Just the possession of nuclear weapons will protect me if I do EVIL!", and hence try to become nuclear-capable. In the same way the appeasers protect Russia.
And hence the appeaser's argument becomes one for increased proliferation, and an increased chance of becoming cinders.
Which is so obvious that I wonder why they call for it. Either because they're too stoopid to realise that is where it will lead, or because they actually want Russia to 'win'...
Which are you?
But sadly i dont think a ukrainian win is possible now so your point is moot.They dont have either the men or equipment.
You are like the sneak at school snitching to the teacher who everyone hates. Elon Musk agrees with me and i imagine he has considerable more knowledge than yourself.
A post surely worth the same as a hundred of Leon’s posts warning of the oncoming AI apocalypse, based on pasting stuff he read the internet just moments before, without even a few seconds’ intervening thought?
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
Nonsense. Johnson actually did rather little for Ukraine. He used his full skillset to make it look much more. Germany has delivered much more, but quietly.
Germany has delivered more because it has more to give, but I think Johnson would have spent the money necessary to start up the production lines to produce new kit to send.
Johnson made sure that Ukraine had the equipment it needed to defend Kyiv in the first month of the war - at a time when Germany was promising to send non-lethal equipment only.
That help was delivered before the invasion. It was actually Ben Wallace's project pushed through in the face of Boris Johnson's scepticism.
Johnson very quickly identified the bandwagon and he jumped on quick. Rhetoric does matter and Johnson is good at it. But it had no effect at all on the Russian advance. For that you need hard weapons and cash. The main suppliers of those have been elsewhere.
Im.not sure now what the west is trying to achieve in ukraine. They seem to be supplying ukraine with just enough to allow them to lose slowly. Surely its best upping the ante and going all in or calli g for peace.
I am in favour of supplying them with nuclear weapons. Big, fuck off ones. That’s the kind of message that sticks in the mind.
Sure if you want to be incinerated in a mushroom cloud.
Why wouldn't you want Ukraine to have nuclear weapons?
Ukraine is losing and desperate so launches a nuclear attack on Moscow. Moscow responds by nuking Kyiv and other western cities perhaps. Everyone loses.
So you would support giving them tactical nukes?
I dont like nuclear escalation period so no.
If you are not in favour of 'nuclear escalation', then you should be calling for Ukraine to win ASAP.
Many appeasers say things like: "Russia may use their nukes against us!!!!!" as a reason not to support Ukraine, or minimise our support.
That is stupid one-dimensional thinking. Because *every* state, and perhaps even some non-state actors, will be watching what is happening and thinking: "Aha! Just the possession of nuclear weapons will protect me if I do EVIL!", and hence try to become nuclear-capable. In the same way the appeasers protect Russia.
And hence the appeaser's argument becomes one for increased proliferation, and an increased chance of becoming cinders.
Which is so obvious that I wonder why they call for it. Either because they're too stoopid to realise that is where it will lead, or because they actually want Russia to 'win'...
Which are you?
But sadly i dont think a ukrainian win is possible now so your point is moot.They dont have either the men or equipment.
You are like the sneak at school snitching to the teacher who everyone hates. Elon Musk agrees with me and i imagine he has considerable more knowledge than yourself.
You're not a teacher; you're a troll.
Correction, was a troll. Which reminds me, no Leon today?
Assuming that the point isn't that decisive lollipop men are preferable...
As the man on the spot, Havering council is broke- Section 114 in all but name. If it's not required by law, it ain't happening. What's unusual is that it hasn't got an expensive legal judgement against it and it hasn't gambled on an unwise investment. Minimum possible expenditure has just outgrown maximum possible income.
One of the infuriating things about Sunak's Zombie Government is the pile of stuff that he has no intention of fixing that will just get worse over the next nine months.
On topic - interesting that they publish the 'raw' lead without the DK squeeze. Instead of 15% it is 21% - suggesting that the DK factor remains worth 4-6%. That should always be considered when comparing MIC and Opinium polls with those of the other companies.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Apart from the huge cache of unexploded bombs nearby.
And the thousands of migrating birds, any one of which could demand a pilot to recreate Sully’s magnificent landing on the Hudson.
And the frequent fog.
The need to build tons of infrastructure from scratch.
And the tiny detail that most of the passengers for the airport come from north or west of London.
And the huge workforce living west of London, such that a significant proportion of Hounslow and Hillingdon residents are employed by the airport, or firms ancillary to it. And hundreds of west London businesses rely on the airport for very significant parts of their income, from caterers through taxi firms through the hotels that accommodate all the passengers and flight crews.
And the environmental damage.
And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after.
And the eyewatering cost. Which wouldn’t have worried Johnson but should worry any sensible person.
Assuming that the point isn't that decisive lollipop men are preferable...
As the man on the spot, Havering council is broke- Section 114 in all but name. If it's not required by law, it ain't happening. What's unusual is that it hasn't got an expensive legal judgement against it and it hasn't gambled on an unwise investment. Minimum possible expenditure has just outgrown maximum possible income.
One of the infuriating things about Sunak's Zombie Government is the pile of stuff that he has no intention of fixing that will just get worse over the next nine months.
They are in power, they don't seem to have any intention of doing anything (or have done for the last, at least, two years that doesn't directly and positively impact their fortunes at the next GE. The sole function seems to be re-election, but once re-elected have no intention of doing anything other than that which will ensure re election in four years time. In the meantime the wider economy and social cohesion goes to the dogs.
A post surely worth the same as a hundred of Leon’s posts warning of the oncoming AI apocalypse, based on pasting stuff he read the internet just moments before, without even a few seconds’ intervening thought?
No joke at all, the bunny bug I mean. Rather resembles bubonic plague sometimes. Right down to the buboes. One of those zoonoses that you really hope never achieves human to human transmission.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Apart from the huge cache of unexploded bombs nearby.
And the thousands of migrating birds, any one of which could demand a pilot to recreate Sully’s magnificent landing on the Hudson.
And the frequent fog.
The need to build tons of infrastructure from scratch.
And the tiny detail that most of the passengers for the airport come from north or west of London.
And the huge workforce living west of London, such that a significant proportion of Hounslow and Hillingdon residents are employed by the airport, or firms ancillary to it. And hundreds of west London businesses rely on the airport for very significant parts of their income, from caterers through taxi firms through the hotels that accommodate all the passengers and flight crews.
And the environmental damage.
And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after.
And the eyewatering cost. Which wouldn’t have worried Johnson but should worry any sensible person.
"Apart from the huge cache of unexploded bombs nearby."
'nearby' is doing a heck of a lot of heavy lifting there, especially for some of the sites.
As for migrating birds: plenty of airports are on islands, or coastal. There must be some form of British exceptionalism that means we cannot manage that risk.
"And the environmental damage."
Airports are, by their very nature, damaging. The current site of Heathrow causes immense damage to the population of west London, for instance.
"And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after."
I'm unsure why it was up to Johnson to say what the site would be used for afterwards, in the couple of decades it would take to build a new airport. And if he did, people would criticise what he said. Besides, it leads to a massive site to employ the people who you claim will lose their jobs...
As Heathrow's third runway shows all too well, the current site is utterly inappropriate for expansion - especially when the 'expansion' is a half-hearted job whose extra capacity will soon get swallowed up.
Assuming that the point isn't that decisive lollipop men are preferable...
As the man on the spot, Havering council is broke- Section 114 in all but name. If it's not required by law, it ain't happening. What's unusual is that it hasn't got an expensive legal judgement against it and it hasn't gambled on an unwise investment. Minimum possible expenditure has just outgrown maximum possible income.
One of the infuriating things about Sunak's Zombie Government is the pile of stuff that he has no intention of fixing that will just get worse over the next nine months.
They are in power, they don't seem to have any intention of doing anything (or have done for the last, at least, two years that doesn't directly and positively impact their fortunes at the next GE. The sole function seems to be re-election, but once re-elected have no intention of doing anything other than that which will ensure re election in four years time. In the meantime the wider economy and social cohesion goes to the dogs.
In office, anyway, as Norma Lamont put it.
But in the event that Rishi gets another five years, what does he intend to do with it?
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Apart from the huge cache of unexploded bombs nearby.
And the thousands of migrating birds, any one of which could demand a pilot to recreate Sully’s magnificent landing on the Hudson.
And the frequent fog.
The need to build tons of infrastructure from scratch.
And the tiny detail that most of the passengers for the airport come from north or west of London.
And the huge workforce living west of London, such that a significant proportion of Hounslow and Hillingdon residents are employed by the airport, or firms ancillary to it. And hundreds of west London businesses rely on the airport for very significant parts of their income, from caterers through taxi firms through the hotels that accommodate all the passengers and flight crews.
And the environmental damage.
And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after.
And the eyewatering cost. Which wouldn’t have worried Johnson but should worry any sensible person.
The cache of bombs is exaggerated and miles from most of the proposed airport sites
Hundreds of airports have been sited on coasts -which are not uniformly covered in birds.
The project would take 15-20 years - time enough to move businesses, as happened at all the other airports that got moved.
The idea that Heathrow would remain empty is farcical. At current house prices, building on it might raise enough money to make a *profit* of the project.
I'd love someone to correct me, as this is from memory;
One of the problems with Heathrow expansion is that the vastly costly third runway (not including connecting infrastructure costs...) only increases capacity enough for it to be pretty much full by the time it is finally finished.
And further expansion is even more expensive.
The answer is a new, less constrained site, where you can build three or four runways (the new Istanbul airport has five) and improved facilities, with room for more expansion.
Either that, or try to restrict passenger usage of planes by doing a French-style domestic restriction - banning flights if there is a competitive high-speed rail route. But that involves having a high-speed rail network...)
I'd love someone to correct me, as this is from memory;
One of the problems with Heathrow expansion is that the vastly costly third runway (not including connecting infrastructure costs...) only increases capacity enough for it to be pretty much full by the time it is finally finished.
And further expansion is even more expensive.
The answer is a new, less constrained site, where you can build three or four runways (the new Istanbul airport has five) and improved facilities, with room for more expansion.
Either that, or try to restrict passenger usage of planes by doing a French-style domestic restriction - banning flights if there is a competitive high-speed rail route. But that involves having a high-speed rail network...)
It's the same logic against building more roads. If you build more roads, you get more cars. And then you need more roads.
I'd love someone to correct me, as this is from memory;
One of the problems with Heathrow expansion is that the vastly costly third runway (not including connecting infrastructure costs...) only increases capacity enough for it to be pretty much full by the time it is finally finished.
And further expansion is even more expensive.
The answer is a new, less constrained site, where you can build three or four runways (the new Istanbul airport has five) and improved facilities, with room for more expansion.
Either that, or try to restrict passenger usage of planes by doing a French-style domestic restriction - banning flights if there is a competitive high-speed rail route. But that involves having a high-speed rail network...)
Yes - residents have caught them scouting for a fourth runway and terminals to match.
And yes - part of the idea in moving the airport was more runways/capacity. One design started with 5, IIRC,
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Apart from the huge cache of unexploded bombs nearby.
And the thousands of migrating birds, any one of which could demand a pilot to recreate Sully’s magnificent landing on the Hudson.
And the frequent fog.
The need to build tons of infrastructure from scratch.
And the tiny detail that most of the passengers for the airport come from north or west of London.
And the huge workforce living west of London, such that a significant proportion of Hounslow and Hillingdon residents are employed by the airport, or firms ancillary to it. And hundreds of west London businesses rely on the airport for very significant parts of their income, from caterers through taxi firms through the hotels that accommodate all the passengers and flight crews.
And the environmental damage.
And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after.
And the eyewatering cost. Which wouldn’t have worried Johnson but should worry any sensible person.
The cache of bombs is exaggerated and miles from most of the proposed airport sites
Hundreds of airports have been sited on coasts -which are not uniformly covered in birds.
The project would take 15-20 years - time enough to move businesses, as happened at all the other airports that got moved.
The idea that Heathrow would remain empty is farcical. At current house prices, building on it might raise enough money to make a *profit* of the project.
A profit for somebody, no doubt. But who owns Heathrow now?
A sad news report about a political activist coming to the same conclusion most do - "she will not put her fingers in letterboxes again" - but unfortunately in her case too late: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68703087
I'd love someone to correct me, as this is from memory;
One of the problems with Heathrow expansion is that the vastly costly third runway (not including connecting infrastructure costs...) only increases capacity enough for it to be pretty much full by the time it is finally finished.
And further expansion is even more expensive.
The answer is a new, less constrained site, where you can build three or four runways (the new Istanbul airport has five) and improved facilities, with room for more expansion.
Either that, or try to restrict passenger usage of planes by doing a French-style domestic restriction - banning flights if there is a competitive high-speed rail route. But that involves having a high-speed rail network...)
The quick and dirty fix for Heathrow is to let it take over RAF Northolt next door.
I'd love someone to correct me, as this is from memory;
One of the problems with Heathrow expansion is that the vastly costly third runway (not including connecting infrastructure costs...) only increases capacity enough for it to be pretty much full by the time it is finally finished.
And further expansion is even more expensive.
The answer is a new, less constrained site, where you can build three or four runways (the new Istanbul airport has five) and improved facilities, with room for more expansion.
Either that, or try to restrict passenger usage of planes by doing a French-style domestic restriction - banning flights if there is a competitive high-speed rail route. But that involves having a high-speed rail network...)
The quick and dirty fix for Heathrow is to let it take over RAF Northolt next door.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Apart from the huge cache of unexploded bombs nearby.
And the thousands of migrating birds, any one of which could demand a pilot to recreate Sully’s magnificent landing on the Hudson.
And the frequent fog.
The need to build tons of infrastructure from scratch.
And the tiny detail that most of the passengers for the airport come from north or west of London.
And the huge workforce living west of London, such that a significant proportion of Hounslow and Hillingdon residents are employed by the airport, or firms ancillary to it. And hundreds of west London businesses rely on the airport for very significant parts of their income, from caterers through taxi firms through the hotels that accommodate all the passengers and flight crews.
And the environmental damage.
And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after.
And the eyewatering cost. Which wouldn’t have worried Johnson but should worry any sensible person.
The obvious answer is to close Heathrow and rebuild it in Manchester. Then have another look at the case for HS3.
A sad news report about a political activist coming to the same conclusion most do - "she will not put her fingers in letterboxes again" - but unfortunately in her case too late: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68703087
A colleague in my canvassing/leafleting days was a postman. Some very useful tips about putting fingers in letterboxes and the like!
A sad news report about a political activist coming to the same conclusion most do - "she will not put her fingers in letterboxes again" - but unfortunately in her case too late: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68703087
A colleague in my canvassing/leafleting days was a postman. Some very useful tips about putting fingers in letterboxes and the like!
A biro is almost as effective, and far less risky.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Apart from the huge cache of unexploded bombs nearby.
And the thousands of migrating birds, any one of which could demand a pilot to recreate Sully’s magnificent landing on the Hudson.
And the frequent fog.
The need to build tons of infrastructure from scratch.
And the tiny detail that most of the passengers for the airport come from north or west of London.
And the huge workforce living west of London, such that a significant proportion of Hounslow and Hillingdon residents are employed by the airport, or firms ancillary to it. And hundreds of west London businesses rely on the airport for very significant parts of their income, from caterers through taxi firms through the hotels that accommodate all the passengers and flight crews.
And the environmental damage.
And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after.
And the eyewatering cost. Which wouldn’t have worried Johnson but should worry any sensible person.
The obvious answer is to close Heathrow and rebuild it in Manchester. Then have another look at the case for HS3.
Honestly, the piffling lack of ambition and paucity of ideas on PB is hideous. Northolt! Manchester! FFS.
There's an obvious answer, one even better than Boris Island. An answer that has zero land purchase costs, and no non-feathered neighbours.
Build the airport in the sky. The answer's in the name: 'air' port. The planes won't have to use as much fuel to climb and descend to and from flight level, and there's a near-infinite amount of air to build it in.
If we get even more ambitious, we could stack the runways one above the other. Or even place them vertically; the planes could land upwards and takeoff downwards, using gravity to slow down or speed up.
Am somewhat curious, as to why it took sooooooo long before "Trent" got the dreaded/coveted PB Ban Hammer?
Seeing as it was obvious from post #1 that "Trent" was yet another Grade F Putin-Bot sub-cadet.
His MO was to take it as far as he could without crossing any of the obvious red lines (on vaccines etc), while at the same time starting arguments on, for example, dealing with dementia, and feeding in latest lines on why (with croc tears) Ukraine can’t win.
A sad news report about a political activist coming to the same conclusion most do - "she will not put her fingers in letterboxes again" - but unfortunately in her case too late: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68703087
A colleague in my canvassing/leafleting days was a postman. Some very useful tips about putting fingers in letterboxes and the like!
If party activists ever had any influence on party policy then spring loaded letterboxes would have been banned generations ago.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Apart from the huge cache of unexploded bombs nearby.
And the thousands of migrating birds, any one of which could demand a pilot to recreate Sully’s magnificent landing on the Hudson.
And the frequent fog.
The need to build tons of infrastructure from scratch.
And the tiny detail that most of the passengers for the airport come from north or west of London.
And the huge workforce living west of London, such that a significant proportion of Hounslow and Hillingdon residents are employed by the airport, or firms ancillary to it. And hundreds of west London businesses rely on the airport for very significant parts of their income, from caterers through taxi firms through the hotels that accommodate all the passengers and flight crews.
And the environmental damage.
And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after.
And the eyewatering cost. Which wouldn’t have worried Johnson but should worry any sensible person.
The obvious answer is to close Heathrow and rebuild it in Manchester. Then have another look at the case for HS3.
Honestly, the piffling lack of ambition and paucity of ideas on PB is hideous. Northolt! Manchester! FFS.
There's an obvious answer, one even better than Boris Island. An answer that has zero land purchase costs, and no non-feathered neighbours.
Build the airport in the sky. The answer's in the name: 'air' port. The planes won't have to use as much fuel to climb and descend to and from flight level, and there's a near-infinite amount of air to build it in.
If we get even more ambitious, we could stack the runways one above the other. Or even place them vertically; the planes could land upwards and takeoff downwards, using gravity to slow down or speed up.
Why has no-one proposed this????
That is just stupid. Just think of all the people who will have their sun blocked out. What they need to do is build them underground. Planes can aim for a tunnel entrance that takes them down to the subterranean airport which will free up land for building houses on top.
A sad news report about a political activist coming to the same conclusion most do - "she will not put her fingers in letterboxes again" - but unfortunately in her case too late: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68703087
A colleague in my canvassing/leafleting days was a postman. Some very useful tips about putting fingers in letterboxes and the like!
If party activists ever had any influence on party policy then spring loaded letterboxes would have been banned generations ago.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Apart from the huge cache of unexploded bombs nearby.
And the thousands of migrating birds, any one of which could demand a pilot to recreate Sully’s magnificent landing on the Hudson.
And the frequent fog.
The need to build tons of infrastructure from scratch.
And the tiny detail that most of the passengers for the airport come from north or west of London.
And the huge workforce living west of London, such that a significant proportion of Hounslow and Hillingdon residents are employed by the airport, or firms ancillary to it. And hundreds of west London businesses rely on the airport for very significant parts of their income, from caterers through taxi firms through the hotels that accommodate all the passengers and flight crews.
And the environmental damage.
And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after.
And the eyewatering cost. Which wouldn’t have worried Johnson but should worry any sensible person.
The obvious answer is to close Heathrow and rebuild it in Manchester. Then have another look at the case for HS3.
Honestly, the piffling lack of ambition and paucity of ideas on PB is hideous. Northolt! Manchester! FFS.
There's an obvious answer, one even better than Boris Island. An answer that has zero land purchase costs, and no non-feathered neighbours.
Build the airport in the sky. The answer's in the name: 'air' port. The planes won't have to use as much fuel to climb and descend to and from flight level, and there's a near-infinite amount of air to build it in.
If we get even more ambitious, we could stack the runways one above the other. Or even place them vertically; the planes could land upwards and takeoff downwards, using gravity to slow down or speed up.
Why has no-one proposed this????
That is just stupid. Just think of all the people who will have their sun blocked out. What they need to do is build them underground. Planes can aim for a tunnel entrance that takes them down to the subterranean airport which will free up land for building houses on top.
Just paint the underside of the 'air'port grey. That way no-one in the UK would be able to tell it apart from a cloud...
I'd love someone to correct me, as this is from memory;
One of the problems with Heathrow expansion is that the vastly costly third runway (not including connecting infrastructure costs...) only increases capacity enough for it to be pretty much full by the time it is finally finished.
And further expansion is even more expensive.
The answer is a new, less constrained site, where you can build three or four runways (the new Istanbul airport has five) and improved facilities, with room for more expansion.
Either that, or try to restrict passenger usage of planes by doing a French-style domestic restriction - banning flights if there is a competitive high-speed rail route. But that involves having a high-speed rail network...)
The quick and dirty fix for Heathrow is to let it take over RAF Northolt next door.
RAF Northolt 'next door' ????
Yes. RAF Northolt is next door to Heathrow (both are in the London Borough of Hillingdon) and even opened to airline traffic while the builders were in.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
I dislike and distrust Johnson intensely, but he did occasionally get things right, though for every cycle scheme there was a garden bridge flop, or a scrapped water cannon. For every lockdown or furlough there was a party or delayed lockdown. Brexit was his biggest mistake and like Suez for Eden will be written on his political grave. Ukraine was something he got right. Electorally he won the last Tory majority for a generation, and possibly the last one of our lifetimes.
He generated ideas like monkeys on typewriters and every now and then produced something readable.
He was better at latching onto other people's ideas than coming up with his own, and the only judgement he exercised was whether he'd look good opening it. The bike scheme was really Livingstone's. The cable car to nowhere is an expensive white elephant. The airport proposal was ludicrous. The water cannons were a shocking waste of money just to win a cheap media story. The grip and judgememt during the pandemic were risible, even making allowances for his illness, and the only really significant achievement of the vaccine programme was got right largely because, after the PPE fiasco and scandal, Johnson was told in no uncertain terms to let the scientists and businesspeople get on with it without interference.
Ukraine was the correct judgement, but it remains my view that he acted so quickly to distract and cover over his previous Russian connections; if we live until papers are released this may be a bigger story in decades to come.
Surely adopting someone else’s good idea and executing it effectively should be encouraged?
The airport idea was far from ludicrous. Among other things, guess what is the major source of pollutants in West London?
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
Apart from the huge cache of unexploded bombs nearby.
And the thousands of migrating birds, any one of which could demand a pilot to recreate Sully’s magnificent landing on the Hudson.
And the frequent fog.
The need to build tons of infrastructure from scratch.
And the tiny detail that most of the passengers for the airport come from north or west of London.
And the huge workforce living west of London, such that a significant proportion of Hounslow and Hillingdon residents are employed by the airport, or firms ancillary to it. And hundreds of west London businesses rely on the airport for very significant parts of their income, from caterers through taxi firms through the hotels that accommodate all the passengers and flight crews.
And the environmental damage.
And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after.
And the eyewatering cost. Which wouldn’t have worried Johnson but should worry any sensible person.
The obvious answer is to close Heathrow and rebuild it in Manchester. Then have another look at the case for HS3.
Honestly, the piffling lack of ambition and paucity of ideas on PB is hideous. Northolt! Manchester! FFS.
There's an obvious answer, one even better than Boris Island. An answer that has zero land purchase costs, and no non-feathered neighbours.
Build the airport in the sky. The answer's in the name: 'air' port. The planes won't have to use as much fuel to climb and descend to and from flight level, and there's a near-infinite amount of air to build it in.
If we get even more ambitious, we could stack the runways one above the other. Or even place them vertically; the planes could land upwards and takeoff downwards, using gravity to slow down or speed up.
Why has no-one proposed this????
That is just stupid. Just think of all the people who will have their sun blocked out. What they need to do is build them underground. Planes can aim for a tunnel entrance that takes them down to the subterranean airport which will free up land for building houses on top.
I believe the mildly fictionalised Thunderbirds was based on some early plans along those lines.
A sad news report about a political activist coming to the same conclusion most do - "she will not put her fingers in letterboxes again" - but unfortunately in her case too late: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68703087
Use a wooden spoon to push them through, a tip I got on PB.
A sad news report about a political activist coming to the same conclusion most do - "she will not put her fingers in letterboxes again" - but unfortunately in her case too late: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68703087
A colleague in my canvassing/leafleting days was a postman. Some very useful tips about putting fingers in letterboxes and the like!
If party activists ever had any influence on party policy then spring loaded letterboxes would have been banned generations ago.
And door-step level ones!
Also those annoying whiskers. It's not as though a bit of a draught is going to kill anyone.
I'd love someone to correct me, as this is from memory;
One of the problems with Heathrow expansion is that the vastly costly third runway (not including connecting infrastructure costs...) only increases capacity enough for it to be pretty much full by the time it is finally finished.
And further expansion is even more expensive.
The answer is a new, less constrained site, where you can build three or four runways (the new Istanbul airport has five) and improved facilities, with room for more expansion.
Either that, or try to restrict passenger usage of planes by doing a French-style domestic restriction - banning flights if there is a competitive high-speed rail route. But that involves having a high-speed rail network...)
The quick and dirty fix for Heathrow is to let it take over RAF Northolt next door.
RAF Northolt 'next door' ????
Yes. RAF Northolt is next door to Heathrow (both are in the London Borough of Hillingdon)
(Snip)
The residents of Hayes and Hillingdon may beg to differ at that...
Edit: Northolt's single runway (1,600m) is also under half the length of Heathrow's runways 3,600/3,990m), and without much room for expansion.
I'd love someone to correct me, as this is from memory;
One of the problems with Heathrow expansion is that the vastly costly third runway (not including connecting infrastructure costs...) only increases capacity enough for it to be pretty much full by the time it is finally finished.
And further expansion is even more expensive.
The answer is a new, less constrained site, where you can build three or four runways (the new Istanbul airport has five) and improved facilities, with room for more expansion.
Either that, or try to restrict passenger usage of planes by doing a French-style domestic restriction - banning flights if there is a competitive high-speed rail route. But that involves having a high-speed rail network...)
The quick and dirty fix for Heathrow is to let it take over RAF Northolt next door.
RAF Northolt 'next door' ????
Yes. RAF Northolt is next door to Heathrow (both are in the London Borough of Hillingdon)
(Snip)
The residents of Hayes and Hillingdon may beg to differ at that...
Edit: Northolt's single runway (1,600m) is also under half the length of Heathrow's runways 3,600/3,990m), and without much room for expansion.
Some years ago a 707 accidently landed there thinking it was Heathrow. It took a while to get it back out.
Edit: I think we've had this before on PB, and the truth might be a little different, although not completely so. I just recall my father's tales quite well, and corrections less so.
This must be a joke. Not even the Russians could be this stoopid...
"The Moscow Crocus City Hall terrorists probably had brain chips implanted by Western intelligence agencies that together with neuro-linguistic programming coordinated their actions,"
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, which will include hundreds of "old but serviceable" armored vehicles and Aster missiles, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said in an interview with La Tribune, Le Monde reports. https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1774355574672458035
France is one of the countries that is starting to understand the threat
The threat from Europe's point of view is that the US drops the baton if Trump is elected. All European countries, including us, should be gearing up to fill the hole if that happens.
The point of all the tedious Trent style propaganda is to create a perception that the Russian invasion can't be defeated, and that we should bow to the inevitable.
It's considerably more likely that a regular and reliable supply of western arms would see the opposite outcome.
And Putin isn't offering peace anyway. He's demanding capitulation, with no guarantees.
We can stop him now, or we can stop him next time, when he's rebuilt his military, at far greater cost.
What is clear, sadly, is that last summer's offensive campaign by Ukraine was a disaster. I think that there was a belief that the superior kit that they had received from NATO could cut through where the Russians had failed and they learned at terrible cost that that was not the case. There were also delusions that the Russians were running out of kit, ammunition, missiles, even men and one more heave could see their collapse. These delusions proved wildly optimistic and costly. Even with modern tech defence has enormous advantages in both shaping and using the battlefield to expose your enemy to the unspeakable power of modern weaponry.
Ukraine now face several years of grim defence slowly losing ground for Russian lives. It is not an enticing prospect but we need to do all we can to help them.
The thing that can change the calculation is long range weaponry. With long range weaponry Ukraine can hit Russian equipment and supplies away from the front line, and they can inflict damage without incurring casualties with a direct assault.
Two years into the war and Ukraine still has fewer artillery shells, isn't being provided with all the long-range weapons the West has available, and it's having to rely on it's own drone developments to try to fill the gap.
There's a route to victory for Ukraine which lies in providing Taurus, ATACMs, and using the much-vaunted economic superiority of the West to produce long-range missiles and artillery shells in sufficient quantity to obliterate the Russian Army from a distance. Get It Done.
The Storm Shadows have certainly had a major impact, particularly in the Black Sea and they show the merits of your point. What we certainly need to do is to make the price of continued warfare simply unbearable for Russia bringing down Putin and his gang. Longer range weapons are a good way to do that and to retaliate against the never ending destruction of Ukrainian cities. I believe we can and should do this.
I think this is where we see evidence of Ukraine suffering for the absence of Boris Johnson.
We saw it with cycle infrastructure in London, with resolving the Brexit impasse, with the vaccines and with sending ammunition and weapons in February 2022. There have been these times when Boris Johnson recognised what needed to be done and made sure it was done, regardless of who it upset, or whether it broke convention.
I didn't like the man. I cheered his downfall. But it seems clear that his successors, and other Western leaders, have failed to measure up to the example he set on Ukraine.
Nonsense. Johnson actually did rather little for Ukraine. He used his full skillset to make it look much more. Germany has delivered much more, but quietly.
Germany has delivered more because it has more to give, but I think Johnson would have spent the money necessary to start up the production lines to produce new kit to send.
Johnson made sure that Ukraine had the equipment it needed to defend Kyiv in the first month of the war - at a time when Germany was promising to send non-lethal equipment only.
That help was delivered before the invasion. It was actually Ben Wallace's project pushed through in the face of Boris Johnson's scepticism.
Johnson very quickly identified the bandwagon and he jumped on quick. Rhetoric does matter and Johnson is good at it. But it had no effect at all on the Russian advance. For that you need hard weapons and cash. The main suppliers of those have been elsewhere.
Im.not sure now what the west is trying to achieve in ukraine. They seem to be supplying ukraine with just enough to allow them to lose slowly. Surely its best upping the ante and going all in or calli g for peace.
I am in favour of supplying them with nuclear weapons. Big, fuck off ones. That’s the kind of message that sticks in the mind.
Sure if you want to be incinerated in a mushroom cloud.
Why wouldn't you want Ukraine to have nuclear weapons?
Ukraine is losing and desperate so launches a nuclear attack on Moscow. Moscow responds by nuking Kyiv and other western cities perhaps. Everyone loses.
So you would support giving them tactical nukes?
I dont like nuclear escalation period so no.
If you are not in favour of 'nuclear escalation', then you should be calling for Ukraine to win ASAP.
Many appeasers say things like: "Russia may use their nukes against us!!!!!" as a reason not to support Ukraine, or minimise our support.
That is stupid one-dimensional thinking. Because *every* state, and perhaps even some non-state actors, will be watching what is happening and thinking: "Aha! Just the possession of nuclear weapons will protect me if I do EVIL!", and hence try to become nuclear-capable. In the same way the appeasers protect Russia.
And hence the appeaser's argument becomes one for increased proliferation, and an increased chance of becoming cinders.
Which is so obvious that I wonder why they call for it. Either because they're too stoopid to realise that is where it will lead, or because they actually want Russia to 'win'...
Which are you?
But sadly i dont think a ukrainian win is possible now so your point is moot.They dont have either the men or equipment.
You are like the sneak at school snitching to the teacher who everyone hates. Elon Musk agrees with me and i imagine he has considerable more knowledge than yourself.
You're not a teacher; you're a troll.
Correction, was a troll. Which reminds me, no Leon today?
I'd love someone to correct me, as this is from memory;
One of the problems with Heathrow expansion is that the vastly costly third runway (not including connecting infrastructure costs...) only increases capacity enough for it to be pretty much full by the time it is finally finished.
And further expansion is even more expensive.
The answer is a new, less constrained site, where you can build three or four runways (the new Istanbul airport has five) and improved facilities, with room for more expansion.
Either that, or try to restrict passenger usage of planes by doing a French-style domestic restriction - banning flights if there is a competitive high-speed rail route. But that involves having a high-speed rail network...)
The quick and dirty fix for Heathrow is to let it take over RAF Northolt next door.
RAF Northolt 'next door' ????
Yes. RAF Northolt is next door to Heathrow (both are in the London Borough of Hillingdon)
(Snip)
The residents of Hayes and Hillingdon may beg to differ at that...
Edit: Northolt's single runway (1,600m) is also under half the length of Heathrow's runways 3,600/3,990m), and without much room for expansion.
So send it the smaller planes. It is not ideal but RAF Northolt is already there (and already serves as a private airport for VIPs) so would not take decades of planning inquiries before the whole thing is forgotten. As I said, it would be a quick and dirty fix.
Well he became Trent yesterday so he'll be back soon as himself or somebody new. Sean's actual account isn't even banned, not sure why he doesn't just come as that
Comments
Multiple airports around the world have been moved to specially build islands in shallow water off coasts.
Where Heathrow is now, build a city - with ready made power, public transport, water etc…
If you're interested in videos about aviation, this is one of the best channels imo, run by Swedish pilot Petter Hörnfeldt.
https://www.youtube.com/@MentourPilot/videos
Wowsers. Well, in which case...
Perhaps he should have done a Uriah Heep and Humberled himself.
But he didn't Ouse talent (that's enough - Ed)
It's weird anyone would be surprised by this.
2) the “it’ll blow like an atomic bomb” stuff is rubbish. Deliberate detonations of far larger quantities of explosives produce tsunamis of…. Inches
He could also Stoke up controversy.
And this f***** could certainly bore for Siberia.
I wonder if they'lll sent us someone better Ness time.
Sadly I've failed the Test.
We're going to be making river puns for the next hour, aren't we?
Oh well, let's just go with the flow even if it's Arun flow.
Ah well, it was fun if Fleeting.
But I hate to think what Mr Sunak would have done to the transport links if we were in the middle of building London Johnson Airport.
Another good aviation channel is Blancolirio; although he also covers some non-aviation stuff, and loads of general aviation incidents.
https://www.youtube.com/@blancolirio
The story of how Blancolirio became an airline pilot was quite fascinating, if I recall it correctly.
But, that kept being salami-sliced away to the point of lunacy.
The truth is that any large newly sited airport requires massive infrastructure improvements that may dwarf the actual cost of the airport itself. But that is not a reason not to do it.
I agree with your last line. Then again, I'm rather bullish on improving infrastructure...
Seriously, thanks for that - now bookmarked to try out.
But I fear you are in full spate
Berlin can explain this to you.
(I once went to a talk at the Institute of Civil Engineers about the then-ongoing construction of the Tsing Ma Bridge to HK ariport. It was right after the Heathrow tunnel collapse, and from memory the mood was rather sombre. I also heard some stuff about what really happened with the tunnel collapse that does not seem to square with the official report.
Sometimes I really miss civil engineering...)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68698714
today is a good day to remind everyone not to give wild rabbits mouth to mouth CPR
https://bsky.app/profile/publichealth.bsky.social/post/3koyrbmjt4k26
https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1774441113216061593
A post surely worth the same as a hundred of Leon’s posts warning of the oncoming AI apocalypse, based on pasting stuff he read the internet just moments before, without even a few seconds’ intervening thought?
As the man on the spot, Havering council is broke- Section 114 in all but name. If it's not required by law, it ain't happening. What's unusual is that it hasn't got an expensive legal judgement against it and it hasn't gambled on an unwise investment. Minimum possible expenditure has just outgrown maximum possible income.
One of the infuriating things about Sunak's Zombie Government is the pile of stuff that he has no intention of fixing that will just get worse over the next nine months.
Tay or leave us, only please believe us
We ain't never gonna be respectable
And the thousands of migrating birds, any one of which could demand a pilot to recreate Sully’s magnificent landing on the Hudson.
And the frequent fog.
The need to build tons of infrastructure from scratch.
And the tiny detail that most of the passengers for the airport come from north or west of London.
And the huge workforce living west of London, such that a significant proportion of Hounslow and Hillingdon residents are employed by the airport, or firms ancillary to it. And hundreds of west London businesses rely on the airport for very significant parts of their income, from caterers through taxi firms through the hotels that accommodate all the passengers and flight crews.
And the environmental damage.
And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after.
And the eyewatering cost. Which wouldn’t have worried Johnson but should worry any sensible person.
'nearby' is doing a heck of a lot of heavy lifting there, especially for some of the sites.
As for migrating birds: plenty of airports are on islands, or coastal. There must be some form of British exceptionalism that means we cannot manage that risk.
"And the environmental damage."
Airports are, by their very nature, damaging. The current site of Heathrow causes immense damage to the population of west London, for instance.
"And Johnson’s complete inability to explain what would happen to the Heathrow site after."
I'm unsure why it was up to Johnson to say what the site would be used for afterwards, in the couple of decades it would take to build a new airport. And if he did, people would criticise what he said. Besides, it leads to a massive site to employ the people who you claim will lose their jobs...
As Heathrow's third runway shows all too well, the current site is utterly inappropriate for expansion - especially when the 'expansion' is a half-hearted job whose extra capacity will soon get swallowed up.
Time to be bold.
But in the event that Rishi gets another five years, what does he intend to do with it?
Hundreds of airports have been sited on coasts -which are not uniformly covered in birds.
The project would take 15-20 years - time enough to move businesses, as happened at all the other airports that got moved.
The idea that Heathrow would remain empty is farcical. At current house prices, building on it might raise enough money to make a *profit* of the project.
One of the problems with Heathrow expansion is that the vastly costly third runway (not including connecting infrastructure costs...) only increases capacity enough for it to be pretty much full by the time it is finally finished.
And further expansion is even more expensive.
The answer is a new, less constrained site, where you can build three or four runways (the new Istanbul airport has five) and improved facilities, with room for more expansion.
Either that, or try to restrict passenger usage of planes by doing a French-style domestic restriction - banning flights if there is a competitive high-speed rail route. But that involves having a high-speed rail network...)
And yes - part of the idea in moving the airport was more runways/capacity. One design started with 5, IIRC,
I thought it was the Spaniards,.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68703087
Seeing as it was obvious from post #1 that "Trent" was yet another Grade F Putin-Bot sub-cadet.
Then have another look at the case for HS3.
Trump is now posting PHOTOS of Judge Juan Merchan's daughter on Truth Social. I'd say this has gone too far, but it had gone too far months ago.
Someone needs to hold him in contempt. HE IS OUT ON BAIL. This is simply unacceptable and has been for a long time.
https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1774231808479232315
There's an obvious answer, one even better than Boris Island. An answer that has zero land purchase costs, and no non-feathered neighbours.
Build the airport in the sky. The answer's in the name: 'air' port. The planes won't have to use as much fuel to climb and descend to and from flight level, and there's a near-infinite amount of air to build it in.
If we get even more ambitious, we could stack the runways one above the other. Or even place them vertically; the planes could land upwards and takeoff downwards, using gravity to slow down or speed up.
Why has no-one proposed this????
"The Twenty-second Amendment is an arbitrary restraint on presidents who serve nonconsecutive terms—and on democracy itself."
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trump-2028/
Edit: Northolt's single runway (1,600m) is also under half the length of Heathrow's runways 3,600/3,990m), and without much room for expansion.
Edit: I think we've had this before on PB, and the truth might be a little different, although not completely so. I just recall my father's tales quite well, and corrections less so.
"The Moscow Crocus City Hall terrorists probably had brain chips implanted by Western intelligence agencies that together with neuro-linguistic programming coordinated their actions,"
Russian General of Internal Affairs V. Olchinsky
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1774370251410387378